


Compounded of Esteem and Love

by OldShrewsburyian



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (Rathbone films)
Genre: Background Case, Baked Goods, Gen, John Watson is a Good Doctor, Literary References & Allusions, London, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Missing Scene, POV First Person, POV Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes Has Feelings, Sherlock Whump, Shippy Gen, Some Humor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-13
Updated: 2019-12-13
Packaged: 2021-02-27 01:20:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21729088
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OldShrewsburyian/pseuds/OldShrewsburyian
Summary: A fill-in fic for the final fifteen minutes or so ofDressed to Kill.In which Holmes fights for his life and his Watson.
Relationships: Sherlock Holmes & John Watson
Comments: 8
Kudos: 34
Collections: Watson's Woes WAdvent 2019





	Compounded of Esteem and Love

**Author's Note:**

> I've elided and modified some of the film's dialogue, and tried to fill in just enough of the plot to make the fic intelligible if you haven't watched the film, or haven't watched it recently. Basic overview info here: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0038494/
> 
> I've changed the "monosulfide" of the film to the hydrogen sulfide that matches the given characteristics of the gas and symptoms the baddies were trying to induce. Reading up on the symptoms, I found that they often include death months after exposure; but I like to think that Holmes, as ever, lives to fight another day. The symptoms portrayed are accurate insofar as they go, but not graphic.

Were I the ideal reasoner my friend Watson is so fond of depicting, I would naturally have taken other precautions. That an affluent lady well-known in artistic circles would have several armed thugs ready to her command, while improbable, is far from impossible, as the event proved. It was small salve to my pride that Hilda Courtney should have thought it necessary to take me with the advantage of numbers, as well as firearms.

The stupidity of my captors was an insult. Had my opponent allowed for the personal equation, surely she would not have allowed me to be seated next to a man who could have a key stolen from his person by a manacled captive. So I had an advantage, and I bided my time. Their failure to blindfold me was rather disquieting than the reverse. My knowledge of London is both extensive and notorious; clearly they had no fear that I would survive to trace their lair. 

Being suspended from a hook like a side of beef while undergoing gradual suffocation by noxious gas is very far from a painless death. The inaccuracy of Colonel Cavanaugh’s dry assurance annoyed me. And the notion that the Prophet Muhammad’s coffin was suspended between heaven and earth has long since been disproved. The travels of Burton and Burckhardt — and, for that matter, of Sigerson — have demonstrated as much. I could not help but wonder if this outré observation of the Colonel’s was calculated as a goad, a fitting jibe for a failed reasoner. For I had failed, and the last words in my ears would be a falsehood and a myth. I thought fleetingly of my wounded vanity. And I thought of Watson. I confess that I had allowed myself to imagine that — whether I died in my bed or, as was more likely, in the streets — the last voice I would hear would be his.

Of course, I had more immediately pressing concerns. The garage must once have been a slaughterhouse; it had been designed for the precise end to which it was being put. It is no joke for a middle-aged Englishman (in his street clothes, no less) to be suspended by his wrists from a girder. If I failed to get my feet over on the first try, every subsequent exertion would be more difficult. Gagged as I was, my supply of air was inadequate, and the air itself was becoming steadily more poisonous. Once the retreating noise of a car motor assured me of my captors’ departure, I set to work. I swung, and scrabbled with my heels, and on the third attempt, I thought that I had succeeded, and that I had no breath to do more. I was wrong on both counts. It must have been a matter of mere moments, that grotesque struggle for purchase, with the humming of the motor and my own panting exertion the only sounds. At last I managed to unhook the chain of the manacles, to bring my hands to the edge of the beam, and drop.

I do not, I realize, show to very good advantage in this account. Let me say in my defense that, even sickened and stifled as I was, I had the sense to dismantle the hydrogen sulfide mechanism before doing anything else. And I had the wit to refasten the manacles around the handle of the locked garage door in order to force it open; the neighborhood to which I had been taken was not so derelict that a broken window would not have attracted notice. I was sick inside the garage. I left the door open just enough that passersby might shake their heads about the drains, rather than run to see what was the matter. And I walked back to Baker Street.

The fresh air, I was sure, would help my burning lungs and eyes. I could lose myself in a crowd. I could be alert for pursuit — although, in truth, I trusted to instinct more than observation. A sorry sight I must have made, and I fear that I served as a warning against drunkenness to at least one nanny’s young charges. In making my way back to Baker Street, I was going home to Watson. This was the certainty that impressed itself most clearly upon my mind in that hour. By doing so, I felt, I was in some measure atoning for the anxiety I had caused him, on this and other occasions. For myself, an ignominious death would have been no more than a just reward for my stupidity. But it would have been unforgivable — unthinkable — to abandon Watson, and this is what I had saved myself from. As I staggered with my breath raw in my throat, as I leaned dizzy and faint against walls and lampposts, I mentally apostrophized him. _You see, old fellow? Nothing to worry about. It’s all right._

As I climbed our seventeen steps, it occurred to me, as it should have done long before, that he was in danger. With me (as they thought) disposed of, they would have no reason to spare Watson, to keep him as hostage or bait. He would be only a resource to them, valuable only for his knowledge of our plans and our possession. And Watson, whose loyalty and courage run so deep that he takes them for granted, Watson would keep our secrets. _Let the Government go hang!_ I silently pleaded with him. _Let them cope with the consequences of their own cruelty and greed!_ Watson’s life was worth more than all the five-pound notes that could be printed in a criminal’s career. 

I was, I discovered, entirely incapable of running. When I finally reached the landing, I fumbled desperately at the door handle — and found him on the telephone. I barely took in, I confess, what he was saying. I noted vaguely that there were biscuits on top of the radio.

“Holmes, where on earth have you been?” I sagged against the door. Watson was safe, and I was home. “I’ve been trying to get you at the club, Scotland Yard… all over London!” Bless the dear man, he probably had.

I could not keep from wincing as I hung up my coat and hat. “You were looking for me in the wrong places.”

“Holmes, a terrible thing’s happened.” His voice was thick with distress. “I’ve been duped. That woman… she made a complete fool of me.”

Roughly I asked him what he meant. It was not what he deserved; after all, she had done the same to me. But my head was pounding, and Watson needed me to solve his problem, and I needed to know what the problem was. It was a simple story, in the end. And I was able to save him from having to recount the whole thing, the ruse and the panic and the theft.

I put my hand on his shoulder, and hoped he would interpret it as a bestowal of comfort, rather than a clutching at it. “You mustn’t blame yourself too much.” _You cannot do so as bitterly as I blame myself._ “She is an extremely clever antagonist.” And I had put him into danger, my faithful and guileless Watson, who now stood distraught (and safe, and safe, and _safe_ ) in the center of our sitting room. I nibbled a biscuit, and attempted to cheer him up by pointing out that he had fallen victim, in a sense, to his own narrative skill. I could not help but see the humor in the thing: my poor Watson, solemnly attempting to rescue a biscuit tin from a sham fire.

“I was as much her dupe as you were,” I confessed, and explained the cigarette: that unique blend of tobacco, _raffiné_ , a specialized lure for the sleuth-hound.

“Have we any bandages about the place?” I did not have to ask to make free with his medical bag, though it was humiliating to realize that my muscles protested even at the motion of lifting it.

“Bandaging?” He was already crossing the room. “What’s the matter, Holmes? Are you hurt?” This is the extraordinary thing about Watson: his own distress was genuinely and instantaneously forgotten in his concern. 

“Explanations,” I told him curtly, “will have to wait.” Exhaustion threatened to overwhelm me. I tried not to shiver as he unwrapped the handkerchief from around my wrist. “At the moment we are faced with a problem which, I fear, is insurmountable.”

This dire pronouncement he did not dignify with a response. “Come over here, old boy, will you?” 

“Right.” It was a relief to put myself into Watson’s hands — relief inexpressible. “Our opponents are in possession of all three parts of the code.” I let myself watch him while he worked. For one thing, of course, it was a chance to gather data, to infer from his expression the severity of my own injuries. But I watched him for the sheer pleasure of it. He was here, and whole, and unharmed despite my inexcusable blundering. 

“And here are we,” I continued, determined to lay out the worst of it before him, “while the Bank of England plates pass into their possession.” His hands were warm and steady. I became conscious of the too-rapid beating of my pulse under his fingers, as he worked to clean the abrasions left by the manacles. His touch was tender, and I flinched from it; I do not know how much my face betrayed.

“Cheer up, old boy,” said Watson, imperturbable, unperturbed. “Cheer up. As Dr. Samuel Johnson once said, ‘There’s no problem the mind of man can set that the mind of man cannot solve.’”

I snapped back into full consciousness. “What’s that?” I was dizzied, now, with sudden knowledge of what was possible, of what was necessary.

“Dr. Johnson.” He did not look up from his ministrations. “He said…”

“Thank you, Watson.” It was his touch that was anchoring me. The fabric of his sleeve beneath my hand was the most tangible reality in a spinning world. “Thank you.” 

The reader may protest that my old friend’s allusion, even linked with the code in our possession, was hardly sufficient to form a chain of analysis. But to me, in that moment, it seemed inevitable that Watson should hand me the clue. I have long considered him a friend in that truest sense expounded by Dr. Johnson, a friend ‘not only useful in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar life.’ And so Watson gave me the clue, and I took it.

“I know where they are, and I’m sorry, dear boy, but I must go.”

“Not alone, Holmes.”

“No, Watson, I won’t have you there. Unconscionable.” But I swayed, faint, as I made for the door; and with Watson’s hand at my elbow, we worked out a compromise. He would accompany me, on the condition that I would confront the criminals alone. I would not have him exposed again to danger. 

“And I,” continued Watson, “am going to ring up Scotland Yard.”

“Watson…”

“While you sit down and finish that biscuit. No arguments. They’ll have the place surrounded before we could get there.” 

I obeyed him. I had no desire to do otherwise. And he was right about the police. For my pride as well as for the safety of our plans, however, I was alone in facing our opponents in the end. I shot the knife neatly from Hamid’s hand, grateful to save the eighteenth-century furnishings from violence. In the echo of the gun’s report came the din of Watson bellowing and stamping up the stairs. There he was, my one fixed point: an old campaigner ruining any hope of ambush by shouting to let me know that he was coming.

Handing the recovered plates to the inspector, I was quite giddy with success. And giving Watson credit was no more than giving him his due. He beamed with pleasure, the good fellow — and it did not escape my notice that he also hovered at my side, as though fearing I would give way to reaction. Meekly I followed him down the stairs, aware that he deliberately preceded me, aware that his anxieties were not entirely unjustified. 

“Watson,” I said, when we were alone on the pavement. “Watson, I…” _I’m so sorry. Thank heaven you’re all right. Thank you._

“You solved the case, Holmes,” he said gently, “and now we can go home.”

I did my best to rally. “I meant what I said to Inspector Hopkins. Yours was the vital clue. And perhaps something nourishing at Simpson’s…”

“Now there I put my foot down.” Watson drew himself up to the full height of his military dignity. “As your medical doctor, I say that you should be home and resting. And as your friend, I refuse to carry you bodily out of the restaurant if you faint.”

I smiled. “Good old Watson.” I passed my arm through his. “Very well. Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time writing for this particular incarnation of Holmes and Watson, inspired by some recent rewatching and a fascination with this Holmes-Watson dyad's non-verbal acting.
> 
> The title is taken from Dr. Johnson's essay on friendship: http://www.johnsonessays.com/the-rambler/requisites-true-friendship/
> 
> “[F]riendship, compounded of esteem and love, derives from one its tenderness, and its permanence from the other; and therefore requires not only that its candidates should gain the judgment, but that they should attract the affections; that they should not only be firm in the day of distress, but gay in the hour of jollity; not only useful in exigencies, but pleasing in familiar life; their presence should give cheerfulness as well as courage, and dispel alike the gloom of fear and of melancholy.”


End file.
